Bronx Cuts: A Talk by Laura Harris

This paper will examine a series of “cuts” made in the South Bronx in the context of the brutal “renewal” of New York City in the 1960s and 70s.  Focusing in particular on architectural cuttings made by artist Gordon Matta-Clark, and smaller-scale cuttings made by Vickie Alvarez, a teenage member of the Roman Queens street gang (recounted in a video she helped compose), it explores the forms of creative habitation these cuts imagine and enact as they too “renew” and rearticulate the space and social life of the South Bronx.

Laura Harris is an assistant professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Riverside.  Her writing has been published by Social Text, Women & Performance, and sx salon.  Her first book, Experiments in Exile:  C. L. R. James, Hélio Oiticica and the Aesthetic Sociality of Blackness will be published in 2017 by Fordham University Press.